A coronation signifies the changing of the crown from one person to another. Significantly, here it also implies a transferring from one generation to another. The film also parallels events we read about every day in the newspapers from gangland killings to presidential assassinations.

CORONATION...is like a black-and-white magical incantation that leaves one shaking—half with fright, half with laughter. The laughter is produced by the absurdity of the events ... the fear—perhaps anxiety is a better word—is evoked by the pace of the visual shocks counterpointed by the more stable, but unnerving, droning of the voice on the sound track. But there is something more that builds tension. There is the screen that has the dark, malevolent quality of some early German and some early American horror films. The pace, again, is of constant frenzy, as much within the shot as from shot to shot, never allowing the tension in the viewer to wane. And then there is that demoniacal laughter of the controlling presence at the pin-ball machine. Richard Myers, like Edgar Allan Poe in his early tales, has the kind of genius that dotes on both the weird and the absurdly humorous and achieves its artistic truth by piling detail upon detail."